Baku, July 26, AZERTAC The Embassy of India in Baku has organized a State Tourism promotion event as a part of the “Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav” at JW Marriott Absheron Baku in hybrid mode. Around 25 representatives from tourism and hospitality industry of Azerbaijan, as well as electronic and print media reps attended the event in physical mode, while their Indian counterparts joined the event in virtual mode.Charge d’Affaires of India in Baku Vinay Kumar welcomed and thanked all the participants for joining the interactive meeting on State Tourism promotion. He also took this opportunity to extend special gratitude to the resource persons who joined the meeting online, including Chairman and Managing Director of STIC Travel Group Subhash Goyal, Director of Tourism India Management Enterprise Private Limited Sanjeev Joshi and Vice President of Indian Association of Tour Operators Ravi Gosain. The Indian participants made presentations on Indian states, including Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Kerala, Goa and Rajasthan.Azerbaijan Airlines representative Elvin Raziyev made a presentation on AZAL and Azerbaijani tourism. Charge d’Affaires Vinay Kumar highlighted “Atithi Devo Bhava”, which is the core ethos of Indian hospitality, treating the guests like God, guides the Indian tourism and hospitality sector and welcomes tourists from all over the world and give them an experience to remember. The vast diversity of tourist attractions covering land and water bodies, rich national heritage and history, geographic and cultural diversities make India one of the most attractive tourist destinations in the world. The Indian Travel and Tourism Industry is a very important sector for India. It is one of the largest components of the service sector of India and contributed to close to 7% of India’s GDP annually. The sector is expected to experience robust growth post-pandemic and to facilitate the growth of the industry, the Government of India has introduced various measures including improvement in tourism infrastructure and ease of travel to India by extending e-visa facility to over 150 countries including to Azerbaijani citizens. While the tourism traffic from India to Azerbaijan has seen substantial growth in the last few years, there is still far and few visitors from Azerbaijan to India. This could perhaps be because of the absence of direct flight connection between India and Azerbaijan and also due to the lack of awareness and information regarding the huge variety of attractive places in India that visitors from Azerbaijan could choose. While the recent announcement by the Azerbaijan Airlines regarding start of direct flight between Baku and Delhi twice a week from 09 August 2022 will reduce the travel time to Delhi to just little more than 4 hours, the event provided more information to the major stakeholders in India and Azerbaijan to help them in welcoming more Azerbaijani tourists to India.Concluding the event, the Second Secretary of the Embassy of India expressed his gratitude to all the participants, including speakers, eminent Indian friends from Azerbaijan and colleagues for their auspicious presence and making the event a huge success. India and Azerbaijan enjoy warm and friendly relations based on historical and cultural ties. The bilateral trade in the first 6 months of 2022 at $895 million has already exceeded the bilateral trade figure for the entire year of 2021 ($739 million). India is now the fourth largest export destination for Azerbaijan. As more people travel to each other’s countries, they will acquire better knowledge and understanding of each other’s culture and economies.